Promise Me This (34 page)

He stood. “Few enough soldiers have had the experience of driving. I intend to see that Constance and Annie are as prepared for this war as I can make them.”

Mr. Sprague was as good as his word. He left his offices early on Monday and gave Constance her first lesson. Both returned for tea winter-pale, their hair, coats, and hats disheveled. Mrs. Sprague smiled behind her teacup; Annie did not dare.

Annie’s turn came the day following with all-too-similar results. But by the end of the second week of January, both girls could fuel, crank, and start the car, drive round the block, and were proficient in the theory of changing a tire, if not in the practice.

Mr. Sprague pronounced them reasonably safe drivers, if they did not have to go too far or too quickly or through streets with more than one pedestrian. On 19 January, Mr. Sprague donated his family’s touring car to the war effort. The Spragues and Annie celebrated both events with sherry and brandied pudding that very night—the night of the first zeppelin raid.

Annie penned Michael’s address. Her hand cramped from writing, but it was only in letter writing that she found sanity.

They swept like great gray ghosts through the night—long, finned cylinders the shape of gigantic cigars, floating between clouds, bearing deadly New Year gifts from the kaiser to the people of England.

The first one came 19 January and dropped its bombs east of London, over Great Yarmouth all the way to King’s Lynn and Snettisham in Norfolk.

But I’d gone to bed early, and of course we saw none of it here in London. Some in Great Yarmouth said they heard the gigantic airship approach and that the zeppelin engine sounded like a distant express train. But everyone in the region, for miles and miles, heard the dropped bombs, one after the other, so close together—grating, horrific booms and crashes, they said, and an explosion that lit the night sky once a gas line was hit.

Four people were killed instantly and sixteen injured—all civilians, several of them women and children.

I’ve come to fear moonless nights, Michael—I never did before. The Germans are able to glide through our skies undetected and do what they will. How long until they reach London?

Mr. Sprague said there is talk of stationing searchlights throughout London, and perhaps other cities will follow. Mr. Peterson, the postmaster, said our bullets are no good—that they do not penetrate the shells of the zeppelins and we cannot shoot high enough. Mr. Sprague reddened when I told him that and said, “We shall see.”

We observe blackout now, as soon as it is at all dark. No lamps are lit in the streets, and all the shops close early. No one wants to be made a target. Our patrollers say that even the smallest spark can be seen from the skies. No one dares light so much as the tip of a cigarette in the streets.

The police have posted warnings and instructions about what we are to do in the event of a zeppelin raid. We must all keep water and sand handy—for fires, you see. And they are adamant that people not go into the street but stay inside. Yet the entire populace flocks to the street each time there is a warning siren of any kind or an explosion! It is as though we are irresistibly drawn, fascinated by the very threat of those majestic death ships bearing our own destruction!

I do not mind so much about the blackouts or the curfews. But I do mind the waiting—forever waiting for the next round of shelling—the strain of not knowing, of lying awake in the night, anxious for a morning that may not come.

Outwardly we keep the British stiff upper lip; but, Michael, inwardly I cower.

I do not want to die young. I have not yet lived—not truly. Sometimes I fear that I will not live through this war, that I will join Owen and Father and Mother very soon. And other times I long to join them, to joy in that glad reunion and end this wracking of my nerves. Oh, God, forgive me! I have grown morose and I did not mean to.

I trust all is well with Aunt Maggie and Uncle Daniel, that they are happy in their new life together. Please give them my love. I envy you there—safe together.

Annie

Michael ripped a clump of his hair by its roots. He wrote, begging Annie to come to America immediately, begging her not to wait until she turned eighteen.

But in February, newspapers reported Germany’s new policy of unrestricted submarine warfare against its enemies—torpedo attacks, without warning, on enemy merchant and passenger craft.

Michael wrote again, this time urging Annie to wait. The risk was too great. He shuddered, unable to think of Annie being blown into the frigid Atlantic water, then unable to think of anything but that. Nightmares and memories of
Titanic
and Owen and Annie swam in circles and cyclones in his head.

In late April, Annie wrote:

Yes, let us wait, then, and see how things progress. Mr. Sprague feels certain that the Germans will not decrease their submarine attacks until Britain releases our blockade in the North Sea. He is equally certain that Britain means to keep the Germans from being resupplied in this way, hoping to force an early end to the war. Our newspapers say that the people of Germany are nearly starving; I cannot help but pity them. Desperate people—on both sides—do such desperate things.

I do want so very much to come, to be with you all, and to be free of this war. And yet Mr. Sprague is concerned for my safety and the wisdom of crossing the Atlantic now. He seems to age daily, to bear the weight of things I do not know. He and Mrs. Sprague have been so very good to me; I could not leave against his wishes.

Do not worry for me, Michael. I have grown somewhat used to the new zigzagging aeroplanes raging over our heads on dark nights. It is the stealth of the great zeppelins and not knowing when they will come that unnerves us all.

By way of more cheerful news, I am getting on in my voluntary aid studies—I should not like to leave England before my training is finished. I feel so glad to be doing something needful at last—something quite outside myself.

Matron has us spend as much time in the hospital wards as the sisters will allow. And although I am only doing simple things, they are useful, and my hands help free the sisters—the real nurses—to assist the doctors and to relieve the suffering of our poor, wounded soldiers. My heart bleeds for them, Michael.

The villains have unleashed a new evil in the second battle in Ypres, something none of the sisters or doctors here have ever before seen—a kind of poisonous gas. It blisters and blues faces and eats away at the lungs in great lesions. It blinds the eyes—sometimes temporarily and sometimes permanently. It is as if the men have bronchitis; they gasp for breath as their lungs fill with fluid until, though terrified for suffocation, they quite literally drown. It is hideous, and I cannot conceive the creature that would curse another mortal so.

We have all been making masks by the dozens and hundreds to send to our soldiers in Belgium and France. They are homely little things—simple butter muslin over cotton wool pads, with tapes to tie behind the head—but if they help at all, it will be worthwhile.

I have done something I think rather brave—though Connie says it is very foolish. I’ve written my aunt Eleanor, imploring her to turn the unused rooms in Hargrave House into a temporary hospital for the wounded and convalescing. There is great need for additional medical facilities here in London. She has not responded, but I can hope that my letter pricks her conscience. That great, empty house is such a waste.

Even with every practical reason to wait here until the war’s end, I confess that I long to come to you and Aunt Maggie, Michael. It seems ludicrous that we’ve never officially met, never been properly introduced. And yet I feel as though we are lifelong friends—nearly the family Owen wished us to be. I pray this war will end soon, that we shall all find ourselves safely together on one shore.

Michael’s stomach churned. His pulse pounded, just behind his eyes. He could not help her, could not spare her the indignities and atrocities she described.

What if German troops breach the Allies’ faltering lines in Belgium and France? What if they take possession of the Continent’s channel ports, cut supply and reinforcement lines between Britain and France, and eventually leap to England’s shores, to Annie?

“That’s done it.” Mr. Hook slapped the Philadelphia paper across the Swainton post office counter. “Surely President Wilson will declare war now.”

Michael’s skin pricked and his ears shot up as he bundled the day’s mail. “What’s happened?”

“The Germans have gone and sunk
Lusitania
—that British liner—with 1,198 civilians dead in the water, 128 of them US citizens.” Mr. Hook shook his head. “Americans will never stand for it! Give that paper to Daniel. He’ll be wanting to read it.”

Every step of the way home, Michael read and reread the report of the 7 May German U-boat attack. From New York,
Lusitania
had been bound for Liverpool.

Visions of thousands of body parts blown beyond recognition and floating on the ocean’s surface turned Michael’s stomach, raising the bile in his throat. The next five nights he dreamed again of
Titanic
, of the freezing, screaming, dying humanity struggling for their last breath in the icy Atlantic.

For weeks, after work Michael haunted the post office, the telegraph, or the train station, eager for word that President Wilson had at last called up American troops to aid the Allies, but no word came. A severe warning was issued, and offers for mediation between the battling countries—but no declaration of war.